The European Commission has violated transparency rules by withholding from journalists text messages between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on the procurement of coronavirus vaccines for EU countries at the height of the pandemic, the Luxembourg EU court said in a ruling published on Wednesday.
“The decision of the European Commission to deny a New York Times journalist access to the correspondence between von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer has been annulled.”
The court recalled that the current rules oblige the European Commission to ensure the widest possible public access to important information.
“The European Commission takes note of today’s decision of the Court of Justice on the request for access to documents. The European Commission will now carefully examine the court’s decision and decide on further steps,” the document said.
The EU court did not examine the merits of von der Leyen’s correspondence itself, but the New York Times’ complaint, which asked for the data, but was denied. The European Commission argued that the messages on Von der Leyen’s phone are not documents that must be kept under the regulations and therefore cannot be found.
However, the Court found the European Commission’s explanations unconvincing and upheld the New York Times journalist’s claim. However, the representative of the publication was able to prove the existence of such correspondence and the invalidity of the European Commission’s argument regarding the lack of information.
Earlier, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that the European Commission committed irregularities in the procurement of coronavirus vaccines in 2020 and 2021 by blocking public access to information on the prices of medicines, nor could it prove that there was no conflict of interest in such procurements.
In 2021, the New York Times reported that von der Leyen and Bourla exchanged messages via SMS to discuss the largest vaccine deal in the EU’s history. The head of the European Commission has already been suspected of directly influencing the negotiation process. In the media, the scandal was dubbed “Pfizergate”.
The total value of the deal could have reached €35 billion, and the 1.8 billion doses purchased significantly exceeded the needs of EU residents. Von der Leyen was asked to publish the content of the correspondence, but the European Commission refused to disclose it in June 2022.
Translated and edited by Hans Seckler